Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations

Stalin's ghost continues to haunt the Kremlin and the minds of those attempting to judge his place in the Soviet Union's past and future. Laqueur's study is not conventional biography but a bringing together and summary of the revelations that glasnost made possible and the debate they have engendered. He adds his own considered views based on years of close study of Soviet politics. The subjects are familiar: Stalin as mass murderer; Stalin as military leader; Stalin as continuing, or perverting, Lenin's course. Many points are clarified, some remain obscure, some are probably unanswerable except by Stalin himself.