Stalin's Curse

December 24, 2012
Florida State University’s Gellately (Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler) adds to his distinguished body of work on 20th-century totalitarianism with this analysis of Stalin’s conduct in international relations between 1939 and 1953. Utilizing recently released Russian documents, Gellately demolishes whatever traces remain of the revisionism that holds the U.S. primarily responsible for the Cold War. On the contrary, Gellately argues that Stalin took consistent advantage of his “overly accommodating” wartime allies in order to export Communist ideals and extend Soviet power after WWII, when it was far too late to keep Stalin from consolidating his hold on Eastern Europe and revitalizing his domestic dictatorship with “all its repressive trappings.” His desire to eliminate “the faintest trace of deviance” led to suppressing ethnic groups at home, establishing repressive satellite regimes in Eastern Europe, and bringing the West’s Communist parties into line with a rigid ideology. The overreach prompted Western Europe and America to rally against Stalin’s influence, but it was not until his death that the “iron will and revolutionary militancy” driving the system finally subsided. Even then, it took another four decades before Stalin’s eroding empire finally collapsed. Interweaving scholarship and the testimonies of those who suffered under Stalin’s rule, Gellately’s history is political and personal. 8 pages of photos, 3 maps.

December 15, 2012
What did Stalin want? As the Red Army bestrode Europe in 1945, many Western leaders believed he intended to spread communism across the world. After his death, historians began to doubt this idea, and revisionists even blamed American aggression for the Cold War. In this forceful, often angry account of Stalin's policies after 1941, Gellately (History/Florida State Univ.; Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe, 2007, etc.) maintains that the original fears were on the mark. Preoccupied by Stalin's Machiavellian rise to power in the 1920s and mass murders during the 1930s terror, historians have taken refuge in history, describing Stalin as a legitimate heir to the czars, carrying on their brutal autocracy, xenophobia and obsession with national security. Gellately discounts this, emphasizing that Stalin remained a sincere Marxist-Leninist, convinced that the demise of capitalism and its replacement by the communism that the world's workers yearned for (if educated properly) was a scientific fact. Such a glorious future justified any tactic, and the author recounts Stalin's relentless suppression of democratic movements, persecution of opponents, mass arrests, show trials, executions and appalling ethnic cleansing as he strove with often-spectacular incompetence to achieve this glorious future. Refusing Marshall Plan aid was foolish; the East European satellites remained a chronic drain; Mao, an admirer, wisely ignored his advice; French and Italian communist leaders would have been wise to do the same. Gellately makes a good case for his thesis, but this will be beside the point for many readers who will conclude that Stalin was simply an evil megalomaniac.

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Starred review from March 1, 2013

Stalin (literally, "man of steel") was not a heroic superman but someone who killed or displaced millions during the 1930s through forced collectivization and the purges of perceived enemies of the people with the aim of maintaining the nascent communist state (and his own power). Gellately (history, Florida State Univ.; Backing Hitler) uses recently uncovered documents to show just how acutely Stalin was aware of the opportunity to expand communism, and with it Soviet power, as the Red Army overran eastern Europe on the way to Nazi Germany. The weakened countries through those troops marched were occupied and eventually forged into the Eastern Bloc. Gellately is masterful at utilizing Soviet and Western sources to clarify the long-term consequences of Stalin's push to power. Alongside recent works such as V.M. Zubok's A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev and Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which detail the human cost and larger Soviet political strategy, this book should become a go-to read on how the Cold War developed. VERDICT Recommended for academic and lay historians and those interested in the global history of power politics.--Jacob Sherman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., San Antonio

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2013
Author of several histories of German and Russian totalitarianism, Gellately here indicts Stalin as the primary instigator of the Cold War, marshaling evidence from Communist archives that undermines the revisionist case for Western responsibility for starting the confrontation. Arguing that Stalin was a hands-on director of expanding the Communist domain from 1939 to 1953, Gellately points to Stalin's ideological convictions as the driving motive in his political decisions, contrasting them with his mollifying arguments to Western diplomats about Russia's reasonable needs for security. The ground-level ramifications were, as Gellately recounts, police-state suppression of freedom and abolition of capitalism through executions, deportations, and gulags, which claimed victims by the millions. Amid his inventory of countries subjected to Stalin's rule, Gellately credits the Red dictator with political acumen in deceiving Western leaders about his true objective of imposing one-party states. Stalin's Communist associates and acolytes knew better, and the archives preserve their orders from Stalin about local tactics for eradicating non-Communist opposition and, in Korea, starting a war. Thoroughly researched, Gellately's fine contribution to Cold War studies will engage readers with its inside-the-Kremlin detail.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)