Bibliograph

Scorched earth, Stalin's reign of terror, Jörg Baberowski ; translated by Steven Gilbert, Ivo Komljen, and Samantha Jeanne Taber

Type

Label

Scorched earth, Stalin's reign of terror, Jörg Baberowski ; translated by Steven Gilbert, Ivo Komljen, and Samantha Jeanne Taber

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 439-493) and index

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Scorched earth

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Jörg Baberowski ; translated by Steven Gilbert, Ivo Komljen, and Samantha Jeanne Taber

Series statement

Yale-Hoover series on authoritarian regimes

Sub title

Stalin's reign of terror

Summary

EUROPEAN HISTORY. German scholar Jorg Baberowski is one of the world's leading experts on the Stalin era, but his work has seldom been translated into English. This book, an unremitting indictment of the mad violence with which Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, depicts Stalinism as a cruel and deliberate attack on Russian society, driven by "totalitarian ambitions" and the goal of modernizing and rationalizing a backward people. Baberowski takes a twofold approach, emphasizing Stalin's personal role and responsibility as well as the continuity he sees in Communist aims and ideology since 1917. Unlike recent apologist accounts that focus on the challenges of modernization or on the operational complexities of managing the Soviet state, this hard-hitting analysis unequivocally locates the origins of the terror in the culture of violence and the techniques of power

resource.variantTitle

Stalin's reign of terror

Classification