Stalin, Mythology and Faberge

There is a refreshing terseness in this new biography.

As the author states, “the literature on Stalin and his era is impossibly vast.” But too often solid research gets mixed up with the slapdash. And there is no shortage of people who will cobble together a bit of both to make political points, to rewrite or even whitewash history.

Khlevniuk is one of the most respected scholars on Stalin and his era, and he seeks in this work to compile “only what we know for certain about Stalin and his time,” and to very directly counter those (particularly in modern Russia) who would romanticize the Stalin era.