Long listed for the The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2016. An epic story of courage, genius & terrible folly, this is the first history of how the Soviet Union`s scientists became both the glory & the laughing stock of the intellectual world. Simon Ings weaves together what happened when a handful of impoverished & underemployed graduates, professors & entrepreneurs, collectors & charlatans, bound themselves to a failing government to create a world superpower. & he shows how Stalin`s obsessions derailed a great experiment in `rational government`. ...

War-torn, unstable & virtually bankrupt, revolutionary Russia tried to light its way to the future with the fitful glow of science. It succeeded through terror, folly & crime
- but also through courage, imagination & even genius. Stalin believed that science should serve the state & with many disciplines having virtually unlimited funds, by the time of his death in 1953, the Soviet Union boasted the largest & best-funded scientific establishment in history
- at once the glory & the laughing stock of the intellectual world. The human cost of this peculiar marriage between the state & its scientists was horrendous, yet, in Stalin & the Scientists, Simon Ings makes clear what Soviet science has done for us.

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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. ...

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. ...

Antony Beevor’s majestic Stalingrad recalls the epic struggle for the city which Hitler foresaw as the German army’s first step to conquering Russia. Beevor recounts how no-one, least of all the Germans, could foretell the deep well of Soviet resolve that would become the foundation of the Red Army; Russia, the Germans believed, would fall as swiftly as France & Pol&. The ill-prepared Nazi forces were trapped in a bloody war of attrition against the Russian behemoth, which held them in the pit of Stalingrad for nearly two years. Beevor points out that the Russians were by no means ready for the war either, making their stand even more remarkable; Soviet intelligence spent as much time spying on its own forces--in fear of desertion, treachery & incompetence--as they did on the Nazis. Due attention is also given to the points of view of the soldiers & generals of both forces, from the sickening battles to life in the gulags. Many believe Stalingrad to be the turning point of the war. The Nazi war machine proved to be fallible as it spread itself too thin for a cause that was born more from arrogance than practicality. The Germans never recovered, & its weakened defences were no match for the Allied invasion of 1944. We know little of what took place in Stalingrad or its overall significance, leading Beevor to humbly admit that ”[t]he Battle of Stalingrad remains such an ideologically charged & symbolically important subject that the last word will not be heard for many years”. ...

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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