Stalin, Vol. II

Stalin's life is one of the most extraordinary of the modern era, both to the man himself and to the world which he dominated and ruined. This second volume is the story of the 'mature' dictator - a figure who had no precedent in ability to shape the USSR and its people. Kotkin's book places Stalin in the context of his day-to-day life in the Kremlin and in the far wider Communist world of which he was the apex. The terror state, the industrial state and the ideological state were all brought together by Stalin in this account of the inter-war world. It finishes when the 'waiting for Hitler' finally came to an end, transforming the nature of the threat faced by both Stalin and the whole society he had shaped.