Moscow lies deep under snow, & Arkady Renko is called in to handle a delicate matter: passengers riding the last metro of the night have reported seeing the ghost of Stalin on the platform edge. Not everyone, it seems, likes the fact that Stalin is dead. But in the midst of a blizzard nothing is as it first appears to be. Renko's girlfriend Eva & his adopted son, Zhenya, seem to be slipping into danger. The owner of a matrimonial agency wants her husband killed. An innocent ' Russian Bride' employs a garrotte. A chess grandmaster wanders into Renko's life & leads him into the line of fire. Diehard Communists gather to sing along with Stalin. ' Red Diggers' uncover secrets buried for half century in a desolate forest & Renko discovers ghosts that have been waiting for him all his life. As Russia swings more & more to the right, Renko is more & more out of step. Not only an original & deeply humane thriller, Stalin's Ghost is also a wonderful evocation of the emerging New Russia. ...

Well before 1929, Stalin had achieved dictatorial power over the Soviet empire, but now he decided that the largest peasant economy in the world would be transformed into socialist modernity, whatever it took. What it took, & what Stalin managed to force through, transformed the country & its ruler in profound & enduring ways. Rather than a tale of a deformed or paranoid personality creating a political system, this is a story of a political system shaping a personality. Building & running a dictatorship, with power of life or death over hundreds of millions, in conditions of capitalist self-encirclement, made Stalin the person he became. Wholesale collectivization of agriculture, some 120 million peasants, necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, but Stalin did not flinch; the resulting mass starvation & death elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. By 1934, when the situation had stabilized & socialism had been built in the countryside too, the internal praise came for his uncanny success in anticapitalist terms. But Stalin never forgot & never forgave, with bloody consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite. Stalin had revived a great power with a formidable industrialized military. But the Soviet Union was effectively alone, with no allies & enemies perceived everywhere. The quest to find security would bring Soviet Communism into an improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain did not work out as envisioned. The lives of Stalin & Hitler, & the fates of their respective countries, drew ever closer to collision. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler: 1929-1941 is, like its predecessor Stalin: Paradoxes of Power: 1878-1928, nothing less than a history of the world from Stalin`s desk. It is also, like its predecessor, a landmark achievement in the annals of the biographer`s art. Kotkin`s portrait captures the vast structures moving global events, & the intimate details of decision-making. ...

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017`A brilliant, compelling, propulsively written, magnificent tour de force` Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard` The second volume of what will surely rank as one of the greatest historical achievements of our age.. . The War & Peace of history: a book you fear you will never finish, but just cannot put down` Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times Well before 1929, Stalin had achieved dictatorial power over the Soviet empire, but now he decided that the largest peasant economy in the world would be transformed into socialist modernity, whatever it took. What it took, & what Stalin managed to force through, transformed the country & its ruler in profound & enduring ways. Rather than a tale of a deformed or paranoid personality creating a political system, this is a story of a political system shaping a personality. Building & running a dictatorship, with power of life or death over hundreds of millions, in conditions of capitalist self-encirclement, made Stalin the person he became. Wholesale collectivization of agriculture, some 120 million peasants, necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, but Stalin did not flinch; the resulting mass starvation & death elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. By 1934, when the situation had stabilized & socialism had been built in the countryside too, the internal praise came for his uncanny success in anticapitalist terms. But Stalin never forgot & never forgave, with bloody consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite. Stalin had revived a great power with a formidable industrialized military. But the Soviet Union was effectively alone, with no allies & enemies perceived everywhere. The quest to find security would bring Soviet Communism into an improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain did not work out as envisioned. The lives of Stalin & Hitler, & the fates of their respective countries, drew ever closer to collision. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler: 1929-1941 is, like its predecessor Stalin: Paradoxes of Power: 1878-1928, nothing less than a history of the world from Stalin`s desk. It is also, like its predecessor, a landmark achievement in the annals of the biographer`s art. Kotkin`s portrait captures the vast structures moving global events, & the intimate details of decision-making. ...

Winner of the British Book Awards History Book of the Year Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize This thrilling biography of Stalin & his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of Stalin as Soviet dictator, Marxist leader & Russian tsar. Based on groundbreaking research, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals in captivating detail the fear & betrayal, privilege & debauchery, family life & murderous cruelty of this secret world. Written with extraordinary narrative verve, this magnificent feat of scholarly research has become a classic of modern history writing. Showing how Stalin`s triumphs & crimes were the product of his fanatical Marxism & his gifted but flawed character, this is an intimate portrait of a man as complicated & human as he was brutal & chilling. ...

In January 1928 Stalin, the ruler of the largest country in the world, boarded a train bound for Siberia where he would embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He was about to begin uprooting & collectivization of agriculture & industry across the entire Soviet Union. Millions would die, & many more would suffer. Where did such great, monstrous power come from? The first of three volumes, the product of a decade of intrepid research, this landmark book offers the most convincing explanation yet of Stalin`s power. ...

The turning point of World War II came at Stalingrad. Hitler`s soldiers stormed the city in September 1942 in a bid to complete the conquest of Europe. Yet Stalingrad never fell. After months of bitter fighting, 100, 000 surviving Germans, huddled in the ruined city, surrendered to Soviet troops. During the battle & shortly after its conclusion, scores of Red Army commanders & soldiers, party officials & workers spoke with a team of historians who visited from Moscow to record their conversations. The tapestry of their voices provides ground-breaking insights into the thoughts & feelings of Soviet citizens during wartime. Legendary sniper Vasily Zaytsev recounted the horrors he witnessed at Stalingrad: You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park.[...] That has a tremendous impact.” Nurse Vera Gurova attended hundreds of wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital every day, but she couldn`t forget one young amputee who begged her to avenge his suffering. Every soldier & officer in Stalingrad was itching to kill as many Germans as possible, ” said Major Nikolai Aksyonov. These testimonials were so harrowing & candid that the Kremlin forbade their publication, & they were forgotten by modern history, until now. Revealed here in English for the first time, they humanize the Soviet defenders & allow Jochen Hellbeck, in Stalingrad, to present a definitive new portrait of the most fateful battle of World War II. ...

The turning point of World War II came at Stalingrad. Hitler`s soldiers stormed the city in September 1942 in a bid to complete the conquest of Europe. Yet Stalingrad never fell. After months of bitter fighting, 100, 000 surviving Germans, huddled in the ruined city, surrendered to Soviet troops. During the battle & shortly after its conclusion, scores of Red Army commanders & soldiers, party officials & workers spoke with a team of historians who visited from Moscow to record their conversations. The tapestry of their voices provides groundbreaking insights into the thoughts & feelings of Soviet citizens during wartime. Legendary sniper Vasily Zaytsev recounted the horrors he witnessed at Stalingrad: ” You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park.[...] That has a tremendous impact.” Nurse Vera Gurova attended hundreds of wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital every day, but she couldn`t forget one young amputee who begged her to avenge his suffering. ” Every soldier & officer in Stalingrad was itching to kill as many Germans as possible, ” said Major Nikolai Aksyonov. These testimonials were so harrowing & candid that the Kremlin forbade their publication, & they were forgotten by modern history--until now. Revealed here in English for the first time, they humanize the Soviet defenders & allow Jochen Hellbeck, in Stalingrad, to present a definitive new portrait of the most fateful battle of World War II. ...

A painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history`s most monstrous dictators
- her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation & purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy
- the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts & uncles, & a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father. As she gradually learned about the extent of her father`s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet & in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States
- leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father`s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, & ultimately died in poverty in Spring Green, Wisconsin. With access to KGB, CIA, & Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana`s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana`s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it`s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father`s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.


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` Compassionate & compelling, this is not a political story but a quest for love in the heart of darkness` Simon Sebag Montefiore `A biography on an epic scale, with a combination of tragedy & history worthy of a Russian novel` Independent ` Superbly well told` Sunday Times Who was Svetlana Alliluyeva? A little girl, her father`s only daughter, his ”little sparrow”; instructed to bury her secrets in her heart by her mother, who shot herself soon after. An observer as her relatives were mercilessly killed & her first love exiled. A woman who tore through relationships with men, joined & abandoned various religions, & became the most famous defector to the United States. The victim of an inescapable truth: ” You are Stalin`s daughter... You can`t live your own life. You can`t live any life. You exist only in reference to a name.” ...

Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2018 The beautifully illustrated, heartbreaking story of an innocent man in a Soviet gulag, told for the first time in English. One fateful day in 1934, a husband arranged to meet his wife under the colonnade of the Bolshoi theatre. As she waited for him in vain, he was only a few hundred metres away, in a cell in the notorious Lubyanka prison. Less than a year before, Alexey Wangenheim
- a celebrated meteorologist
- had been hailed by Stalin as a national hero. But following his sudden arrest, he was exiled to a gulag, forced to spend his remaining years on an island in the frozen north, along with thousands of other political prisoners. Stalin`s Meteorologist is the thrilling & deeply moving account of an innocent man caught up in the brutality of Soviet paranoia. It`s a timely reminder of the human consequences of political extremism.

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