For all the blood on his hands, Josef Stalin is indisputably one of the most important historical figures of the 20 th century. But where many biographers agree with Leon Trotsky's waspish dismissal ...

On this week’s episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke with Stephen Kotkin, a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union who has just published the massive second volume of his Joseph Stalin ...

It’s unusual for two masterpieces to appear within less than a year of each other on a subject that has already been pored over by countless writers from nearly every angle. That has now happened with ...

As there is little to record about Stalin that is not political, this brilliant and fascinating volume is in effect a full-fledged "life and times." The author has devoted many years to studying the ...

Robert C. Tucker, a distinguished Sovietologist whose frustrations in persuading the authorities in Stalin’s Russia to let his new Russian wife accompany him home to the United States gave him crucial ...

We all think we know Stalin. He was the brutal and vengeful dictator of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until 1953, when, mercifully, he died before he could do any more damage. He was the ...

The first volume of Kotkin’s biography of Josef Stalin looks at the Soviet leader’s early and personal life, his role in the Bolshevik Revolution and his eventual control of the Soviet Union starting ...

Stalin continues to fascinate–the central mystery within the riddle inside the enigma that was the Soviet Union. If you Google “Stalin, biography,” 166,000 websites come up. By signing up, you confirm ...