El equipo de Stalin: Los años más peligrosos de la Rusia soviética, de Lenin a Jrushchov

by Sheila Fitzpatrick, Gonzalo García (Translator)

La historia de la Rusia soviética ha experimentado una renovación total en estos últimos años, como consecuencia de la desclasifi cación de millones de nuevos documentos. Uno de los más valiosos frutos de esta renovación es este espléndido libro de Sheila Fitzpatrick, profesora de las universidades de Chicago y de Sídney, y una de las máximas autoridades en la investigación de esta época. El equipo de Stalin nos habla del conjunto de personajes ―Mólotov, Kaganóvich, Mikoyán, Jrushchov, Malenkov, Ordzhonikidze, Beria, etc.― que colaboraron con Stalin a lo largo de toda su carrera y que fueron, además, sus compañeros habituales, casi su familia. Gracias al riquísimo testimonio de sus cartas, memorias y documentos podemos seguir con ellos, desde dentro, los años terribles de la colectivización y de las «grandes purgas», la angustiosa experiencia de la segunda guerra mundial, la decadencia del dictador ―cuando sus propias vidas corrieron peligro― y las luchas por el poder tras su muerte.

Genres: History, Russia, Politics, Nonfiction, Soviet Union, Russian History, Soviet History

496 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Sheila Fitzpatrick (born June 4, 1941, Melbourne) is an Australian-American historian. She teaches Soviet History at the University of Chicago.

Fitzpatrick's research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Stalinist period, particularly on aspects of social identity and daily life. She is currently concentrating on the social and cultural changes in Soviet Russia of the 1950s and 1960s.

In her early work, Sheila Fitzpatrick focused on the theme of social mobility, suggesting that the opportunity for the working class to rise socially and as a new elite had been instrumental in legitimizing the regime during the Stalinist period. Despite its brutality, Stalinism as a political culture would have achieved the goals of the democratic revolution. The center of attention was always focused on the victims of the purges rather than its beneficiaries, noted the historian. Yet as a consequence of the "Great Purge", thousands of workers and communists who had access to the technical colleges during the first five-year plan received promotions to positions in industry, government and the leadership of the Communist Party.

According to Fitzpatrick, the "cultural revolution" of the late 1920 and the purges which shook the scientific, literary, artistic and the industrial communities is explained in part by a "class struggle" against executives and intellectual "bourgeois". The men who rose in the 1930s played an active role to get rid of former leaders who blocked their own promotion, and the "Great Turn" found its origins in initiatives from the bottom rather than the decisions of the summit. In this vision, Stalinist policy based on social forces and offered a response to popular radicalism, which allowed the existence of a partial consensus between the regime and society in the 1930s.

Fitzpatrick was the leader of the second generation of "revisionist historians". She was the first to call the group of Sovietologists working on Stalinism in the 1980s "a new cohort of [revisionist] historians".

Fitzpatrick called for a social history that did not address political issues, in other words that adhered strictly to a "from below" viewpoint. This was justified by the idea that the university had been strongly conditioned to see everything through the prism of the state: "the social processes unrelated to the intervention of the state is virtually absent from the literature." Fitzpatrick did not deny that the state's role in social change of the 1930s was huge. However, she defended the practice of social history "without politics". Most young "revisionists" did not want to separate the social history of the USSR from the evolution of the political system.

Fitzpatrick explained in the 1980s, when the "totalitarian model" was still widely used, "it was very useful to show that the model had an inherent bias and it did not explain everything about Soviet society. Now, whereas a new generation of academics considers sometimes as self evident that the totalitarian model was completely erroneous and harmful, it is perhaps more useful to show than there were certain things about the Soviet company that it explained very well."

Reviews

[Nikos Tsentemeidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εξαιρετικό ιστορικό βιβλίο, διαβάζεται πολύ εύκολα. Βασισμένο στα αρχεία που άνοιξαν, δίνει μια πολύ καλή εικόνα του Στάλιν και των άμεσων συνεργατών του στο Πολιτικό γραφείο, το οποίο μέχρι τις μεγάλες εκκαθαρίσεις είχε ουσιαστικό λόγο, αν και όσο περνούσαν τα χρόνια και εδραιωνόταν η δύναμη και η φήμη του Στάλιν, ο φόβος του αντιλόγου ήταν μεγάλος.

Ο Στάλιν αποτέλεσε μεγάλη προσωπικότητα, που κατάφερε να κρατήσει αυτό που κέρδισε η επανάσταση και ίσως τελικά λόγω του χαρακτήρα του, να επιβάλλεται, έστω και με τα χειρότερα μέσα, ήταν η καλύτερη επιλογή στη διαδοχή του Λένιν, ο οποίος αν και αναγνώριζε τα ελαττώματά του τον προέκρινε από τους υπόλοιπους. Είχε την ικανότητα να παραμένει ήρεμος όταν δεχόταν επιθέσεις και σε δεύτερο χρόνο να διαρρέει κάτι για τον υποψήφιο εχθρό του, έως ότου να αποδυναμώνεται εντός της ομάδας και τελικά να γίνεται εύκολος στόχος. Η μόνη περίπτωση που τον εξόργιζε ήταν ο Τρότσκι.

Στα μέσα της δεκαετίας στις στημένες δίκες, τα πράγματα χειροτέρεψαν και ο Στάλιν έγινε ο φόβος όλων, ο οποίος γινόταν όλο και πιο καχύποπτος ώσπου στα τελευταία του χρόνια δεν εμπιστευόταν πια κανέναν και έχοντας στείλει στην εξορία ακόμα και τους περισσότερους συγγενείς του, τον είχε κυριεύσει η μοναξιά. Σ αυτά τα τελευταια χρόνια έχασε τη δύναμης του στο πολιτικό γραφείο, όπου τα υπόλοιπα μέλη στηρίζονταν μεταξύ τους.

Είναι εντυπωσιακό από τη μία και τελείως κυνικό από την άλλη, όταν κατά τη διάρκεια του πολέμου ο γιος του συνελήφθη από τους Γερμανούς και προτάθηκε για ανταλλαγή, την αρνήθηκε λέγοντας ότι πολλά παιδιά είχαν ανάλογη τύχη.

Αναρωτήθηκα αρκετές φορές διαβάζοντας, τις ομοιότητες με τον Χίτλερ, αλλά και τις διαφορές. Δεν έχω καταλήξει ακόμα, αλλά ήταν τροφή για περαιτέρω σκέψη. Πάντως υπήρξαν θέματα αντισημιτισμού και στη Ρωσία μετά το τέλος,του πολέμου. Αναρωτιέμαι επίσης το μέγεθος της ευθύνης στη συμμετοχή αυτών των κτηνωδιών των υπόλοιπων της ομάδας, όπως του «υπαρχηγού» Μόλοτοφ, του Μπέρια (του οποίου ο φάκελος είναι από τους λίγους που δεν έχουν ανοίξει ακόμα) κτλ.

Ο Στάλιν κατάφερε να περάσει στην κοινή γνώμη τον αντιδιανοουμενισμό. Γι αυτό και δεν ήθελε τους πιο μορφωμένους Τρότσκι, Μπουχάριν κτλ. Παρόλα αυτά αναφέρεται ότι διάβαζε 500 σελίδες τη μέρα.

[Donald]

A common problem in socialist organizations is that they focus on the achievements or crimes of a small number of geniuses or dictators. This is usually supplemented by the alleged achievements of some master-theorist or practical leader that dominates the organization. One way to avoid this is to focus on the rank-and-file, the lives of everyday people in socialist movements and countries. This can turn into celebration for failed revolutions or an Ostalgie. What's often missing is a discussion of leaders below the top person and above the 'masses'. Fitzpatrick's book focuses on the collective around Stalin that discussed policy with him and helped him lead the country. This collective changed over time in various ways but were sometimes effective managers given incredible constraints. The group that survived emerged with a rough consensus of reforms that became De-Stalinization.

The stakes of the choices involved are dizzying to think about, especially given that the ranks below this collective were almost completely decimated by the purges. You can see how Stalin and his team had the French Revolution always in the back of their mind, convinced that factions could quickly derail the revolution and the need to suppress them at every opportunity. Of course, this meant a spiral into the "faction against factions" and the paranoia it entailed. I don't think that can be fully explained by traditional Trotskyist debates about "the interests of bureaucracy" given the devastation of its ranks. I personally wasn't as interested in all the discussion of the children of the team but I understood it's importance for the broader discussion and the fact Fitzpatrick had to lean on their accounts. I'm not an expert on any of this but I thought it was a fun book.

[Omar Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth reading. A nice corrective to all the "Stalin, uniquely evil, one-man killing machine" books, but she does go too far in the opposite direction. She presents the team without any moralizing commentary at all. It is not like she doesnt tell you about the horrors; she does, but the tone is completely objective and non-judgemental. Perhaps too non-judgmental. As she notes, 688, 000 shot in the 1037-38 purge alone (just shot, not died in freezing starving camps) by the party's own careful record keeping, yet reported as just another mundane statistic in her book, almost off-handedly. Similarly, all the family members shot and killed just because they were in the wrong family, mentioned almost too casually.
But still, absolutely worth a read.
New insight for me: how hard-working, independently active and important for the regime, people like Molotov and Mikoyan were. Not just cogs or thugs, but real high level managers of a huge world-changing effort.
Reinforced: the fact that it WAS a world-historical event. Just not of the good kind.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting history of the politburo of the USSR, mostly during Stalin's reign. Written by a professional historian who aims, and succeeds, to make the text readable also for non-professionals. It contains many surprises, at least for me, in that people were often different from how they got to be depicted conventionally. There's also plenty of information on Stalin's character, his loneliness, his tactics when dealing with adversaries etc. It does however confirm that Stalin was a ruthless mass murderer, e.g. during the collectivization of agriculture, the purges of the 1930's, the forced migration of whole national populations that were suspected of having sympathized with the Nazi's. In the early 1950's it seemed Stalin became completely paranoid and that great purges were on his mind again, this time threatening to kill some of his most loyal collaborators, such as Molotov. He died, of a heart attack, before the plan could be executed though. The book then continues, showing that the collective leadership exercised by the politburo did a much better job than Stalin, including the denouncing of the latter's many crimes. A register with the names and short description of the recurring characters would have been useful.

[Howard Cincotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historian Shelia Fitzpatrick’s thesis is straightforward, and in some ways, obvious. However monstrous Stalin’s tyranny, he didn’t operate like a version of Ming the Merciless, issuing edicts from his Kremlin ice palace. Instead, Stalin worked for decades with a varied yet remarkably stable coterie of advisers and party officials who remained personally loyal throughout his reign. Moreover, this “team” managed to sustain its collective leadership of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death in 1953 until Nikita Khrushchev took full power in 1957.

Fitzpatrick offers an important and often overlooked perspective on how Stalin wielded such unprecedented, brutal, and often erratic power for almost three decades, from the 1920s to his death. He did so by manipulating his inner circle, alternately praising and criticizing them, always ensuring that their chief loyalty was to him, and cutting down anyone whose stature seemed, even momentarily, to rival his own. His advisers may have held great authority in such areas as security, agriculture, and industry — even party affairs — but ultimately, they were all dependent on Stalin’s good will.

Who were the chief members of this team who, falling in and out of favor, largely survived the Stalin years — unlike millions of other victims, from party apparatchiks to peasants— who suffered death or the gulag? Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Georgy Malenkov, Laventy Beria, Lazar Kaganovich, Grigory Ordzhonikidze, Klim Voroshilov, and later, Nikita Khrushchev. This is only a partial list of figures that cycled in and out of the leadership in these years. On Stalin’s Team, based on extensive archival research of Soviet Communist Party records, may be nirvana for Kremlinologists, but rather daunting for the general reader for whom many of the names are relatively unfamiliar.

The intense focus on the minutia of inter-group relations effectively conveys the claustrophobic quality of working within Stalin’s inner circle. But it also smothers the larger narrative of what Stalin’s policies meant for the country, and the world, when carried out by such zealous subordinates, each trying to outdo the other in loyalty to their leader. True, figures like Molotov and Beria had more latitude to question and even dissent from some of Stalin’s proposals. On the other hand, they could only preserve themselves, and their careers, by implementing such major policies as the enforced collectivization of agriculture, which led to a horrific famine in Ukraine, and signing off on the torture and execution that marked the Great Terror of the late 1930s.

The highpoint for the collective leadership may have been World War II, when Stalin needed every bit of political support after misjudging Hitler and presiding over an unprecedented military disaster in 1941, until the German advance stalled before Moscow and the turning-point victory at Stalingrad in 1942. This also would have been the only moment when the team could have united and collectively ousted Stalin. Their combination of loyalty and fear, however, was too great and the moment passed.

The coming of the Cold War and Stalin’s increasing paranoia crushed any hopes of a genuine political thaw in the late 1940s. For the first time, moreover, Stalin’s differences with his team members threatened their careers and even their lives. The most notorious example was the arrest of Molotov’s Jewish wife, who was imprisoned and exiled until Stalin’s death.

Fitzgerald portrays a diminished but dangerous Stalin in the postwar years, someone who hated to be alone, yet proceeded to arrest and interrogate members of his own extended family. As a result, Stalin became even more dependent on his inner political circle to accompany him in drunken late-night dinners while they still had responsibilities running party and government affairs. It comes as no surprise that chronic fatigue and ill health plagued them all.

Stalin’s paranoia peaked at the time of the concocted Doctor’s Plot in 1952, but fortunately he died before his plans could be implemented. The team executed Beria, the secret police chief whom the others feared most, but Fitzgerald argues that the collective leadership proved its strength and resilience by continuing to operate effectively until Khrushchev’s Anti-Party campaign ousted his rivals in the late 1950s.

[Barry Smirnoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully written, the personalities come to life as never before and give a human dimension to the interaction of Stalin with his "team". This advances our understanding of Stalin's method of running the USSR. The book makes the case that the "team" had a direct impact in advancing the party line, even if Stalin had the most important role in deciding changes in policy. As a result, there was no crisis when Stalin died. The team just kept doing their jobs.

[Bettie]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016...

[Héctor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Está bastante bien. Me ha gustado aunque al final se me ha hecho un poco pesado y al final te acabas perdiendo con la cantidad de personajes. La hipótesis que se desarrolla, bastante convincentemente, en el libro es que lejos de ser la dictadura unipersonal de Stalin, a partir de los años 20 el gobierno de la Unión Soviética era más similar a un liderazgo colectivo en el que Stalin era el primus inter-pares, de ahí el título "El Equipo de Stalin". El libro cuenta básicamente las relaciones entre los miembros del equipo desde 1920 a 1960, pasando por la eliminación de las facciones en los 20, la colectivización y las Grandes Purgas en los 30 y la guerra en los 40. El capítulo más impresionante es de las Grandes Purgas. Sin ser la autora una antiestalinista furibunda, (de hecho en las reseñas del libro se la acusa demasiado de humanizar a Stalin y cía.), es bastante impresionante el alcance de las mismas, la crueldad, la ida de olla general que supuso.
100% recomendado si os mola la sovietología y las intrigas de poder.

[Baris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a joyful read. A person interested in the Soviet history will find very interesting anecdotes and stories in the text. In this regard, it is definitely worth reading. But unlike what writer suggests in the introduction, the book does not really say anything new or challenging for the existing knowledge (paradigm) on Stalin's modus operandi.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another in Fitzpatrick's ongoing attempt to rehabilitate Stalin and mitigate his disastrous forced collectivization and various purges.

This one is an amoral and bloodless description of the role she thinks Stalin's "team" played during his reign but she doesn't really prove her thesis that there was a collective leadership, with Stalin first among equals, running the USSR from the late 20s through Stalin's death in 1953.

The author does do a good job of tracking who was in and out of favor among the henchmen at various times during Stalin's reign. She also details how Mikoyan was apparently the only "team" member who had a shred of conscience and how Molotov acted more like a Socialist robot rather than a human being. But she either glosses over the bloodshed, i. e. the Leningrad Affair didn't just remove Kuznetsov and Voznesensky, many others were executed and thousands were arrested, or repeats the Soviet line that Kirov was assassinated by a lone gunman and that Ordzhonikidze committed suicide because of his depression.

If you want a better picture of how Stalin ruled USSR I would recommend Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; Donald Rayfield's Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him; and all of Robert Conquest's work.

[Pep Bonet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm no historian, just someone slightly interested in history. I say this, because I'm far away from the skirmishes among different schools. All I can say is that I found this book very interesting. I remember having decided that it could be a good one reading an interview with a historian who was reading it. He didn't say whether it was good or not, but my guess was that it deserved to be read. Indeed, it seems to have an innovative approach in that it tries to reflect the relations inside Stalin's team, not based on official policy documents, but on what they were telling to others and their observable behaviour. In this sense, it is very enlightening and departs clearly from the standard interpretation of a lonely mad dictator. There's for many years a real team work, directed by Stalin, but still with lots of consultations, especially during certain periods. What you won't see is bitter attacks on the malevolence, evil of Stalin. He comes out as a person able to kill hundreds of thousands, but the book keeps a sense of impartiality which is appreciated. In this sense, not being a pamphlet, it has even more impact, because you can feel how the team -well, those who could- survived years of terror and even were able to extend it a bit, for instance, by suppressing Beria, a helpful scapegoat.

I think I made a good choice when I decided to read it.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book about an overlooked area of Soviet history. No matter how cutthroat you think your management team is...

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is easy to imagine Stalin as the absolute leader of the Soviet Union, who ruled and made decision single-handedly, with people around him as merely yes-men. However the truth is not that simple. As this book explains, Stalin, in fact, acted as a captain of a team (or a gang, if you wish), and only moved into erratic behaviours late in his life.

His team was filled with colourful set of characters, first with people such as Molotov (the greyish, hard-working, "stone-bottomed), Kaganovich (the explosive, actually the last one to die of the team), Kirov (the affable, who met an untimely death rather suspiciously), Khruschev (the vulgar, peasant-like, rather unassuming kind of person, who surprisingly took the leadership baton), and Mikoyan (called The Great Survivor, for he was the last one from the team who went out from Soviet political scene). Later on, many new faces also joined, like Malenkov (the quintessential team player) and Beria (the smart, although power hungry with rather radical, liberal reformist tendencies shown only after Stalin was finally dead).

Although Stalin himself had said that the team would be on the lost after he died, suprisingly, the team kept on playing, even without its captain, plotting and manuveuring for few years and only died out when Khruschev denounced Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich as part of "anti-party faction" and banished them. The author itself stated that the team's survivability was the greatest plot twist.

In the end, the book is a great reference if you wish to know more about the lives of Stalin and people who interacted intimately with him, and how the team work together to fight threats, both from inside and outside, and also to dispel the myth about Stalin as an absolute ruler.

[thekar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book revolves around "Stalin's team" or the semi-formal team of people that was the government of USSR between ~1925-1957. This period saw a rapid transformation of the Soviet Union from a backward agricultural part of Europe to an industrial superpower with nuclear weapons. Could Stalin do this alone? The answer of the book is a definite "no". A group of various people with the most prominent being Molotov, Beria, Mikoyan, and lately Khrushchev not only assisted, but engineered many of the soviet policies these years. Stalin was "first among equals", or that what he wanted to appear inside the communist party. The leadership was collective from the beginnings when the team rallied to defeat Trotsky and the right-wing opposition in the Party, and when the country began to industrialize in the 30s. Stalin started to accumulate more personal power in the late 30s, but the german invasion reverted the way of governing USSR back to "teamwork". Finally, in the early 50s , Stalin attempted again to assert more power , but the team stopped him and ruled the USSR collectively after his death. Khrushchev dissolved the team and attempted to rule alone, breaking a taboo, but after a series of economic failures he was dismissed , and soviet governance reverted back to group rule.


The book helps dissolve some nonsense that Stalin was the "absolute dictator" of USSR, which is clearly not the case, although he was a big big factor in the government. It is also an interesting insight in the workings of soviet government in 1930-1950. On the other hand the book sometimes makes blatant anti-soviet comments, that make reading inconsistent, as if the author doesn't want to be accused of liking the soviet leaders.

I give a 4/5 , but it is actually a 3.5/5.

[Andrew Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject of this book is a relationship between Stalin and his inner circle men. The contents of this team has been changing over the years. Some of its members have been put shifted aside, or even persecuted or killed. The longest tenure ones like Molotov (since 1927) and Mikoyan (since 1935) have been termed by Stalin as rightists and only survived due to Stalin's death in 1953. Only four members of the inner circle lasted till the very end: Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev and Bulganin. Malenkov was ousted by Khrushchev in 1957 as a member of the Anti-Party Group. Bulganin was forced to resign in 1958, and Beria arrested in 1953 and shot.

The Khrushchev's revelations at XX Party Congress in 1956 about Stalin had been based on an investigation by Petr Pospelov, a Central Committee secretary and editor of Pravda. It found that between 1935 and 1940 almost two million people had been arrested for anti-Soviet activity and almost 700 hundred thousand had been shot. Out of all the Central Committee members and candidates elected at the Party Congress in 1934, 70 percent had been shot by the time the next congress met in 1939.

Stalin's paranoia about any potential threats, did not even spare his own family. His sister in law Zhenya Alliluyeva was sentenced for 10 years for "anti-soviet agitation", in other words, careless talk. Anna Redens, another sister in law, Fedor Allilyuev, a brother in law; and 21 year old Dzhonik Svanidze, whose parents had been Great Purge victims, had been imprisoned as well.

Molotov had to divorce his wife, as she became active in the Jewish organisation. She was exiled to Siberia and allowed to return only after Stalin's death.

[Sugarpunksattack Mick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shelia Fitzpatrick's 'On Stalin's Team' is an excellent book covering the emergence of Stalin as the leader of the USSR along with what Fitzpatrick calls Stalin's 'team'. Fitzpatrick is a revisionist historian and disputes the totalitarian model of looking at Stalin and USSR history and governance. Fitzpatrick does not dispute the power that Stalin wielded, but explains that his position is always supported by his team. Some of the team members shifted over time, but the team was always essential to the governing of the USSR. The significance of such a thesis implies that all the traditional explanations of 'Stalin as omnipotent dictator controlling every aspect of life in the USSR' is absurd (as if you didn't already know that).

Fitzpatrick's intent was to appeal to both popular and academic audiences, which is an admiral goal. She pulls from a variety of sources with an emphasis on primary texts of those who were part of the team, from their relatives, and the archives that were opened after the fall to the USSR. The book is wonderful, and gives a great overview of the lead up to the Stalin period as well as a brief look at the post-Stalin period. That said, I personally was looking for a text that engaged more deeply with the historiography of the USSR. She does this in a few places, mainly the introduction and conclusion, but not in any significant depth.

[Ionut Iamandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

E celebră fotografia de grup a conducerii sovietice din care, în timp, după fiecare epurare, mai dispare cîte un personaj, pînă cînd Stalin rămîne singur în ea. A fost evocată, printre alții, și de Arthur Koestler în romanul Întuneric la amiază, publicat prima oară în 1940 – semn că imaginea de dictator solitar a lui Stalin a circulat de timpuriu. Dar e posibil ca fotografia menționată să nu dea seamă de tot mecanismul puterii staliniste. Cel puțin aceasta e ipoteza lansată de Sheila Fitzpatrick în cartea sa cea mai recentă, În echipa lui Stalin. Dinamica schimbărilor în anturajul dictatorului, argumentează istoricul australian, nu a fost atît de pronunțată precum lasă să pară istoriografia ulterioară; ba chiar sînt personaje care au rezistat în „poza de grup” pînă la capăt, supraviețuindu-i lui Stalin. Sînt cei fără de care, a scris Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin nu ar fi putut face ceea ce a făcut ca lider politic și dictator, și în același timp sînt cei ce nu ar fi avut puterea pe care au avut-o fără Stalin.

Citește mai mult: https://dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/carte...

[Thomas Ernst · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most interesting topic ; however, a very well written book in terms of reading
The book stays focused on the members of the team that worked with Stahlin from mid 1920's through his death in 1953. The book also gives you a view of these Communists and their lack of concern for policy changes that resulted in millions of people being murdered being and millions more being locked up in prison camps for years. Some team members allowed their wives to sent off to prison camps (Molotov) and did nothing about it knowing that others committed suicide (Ordzhonikidze) after tangling with Stahlin.

[History teacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jiný a nový pohled na politiku sovětského svazu - pohledem nejbližších Stalinových spolupracovníků se člověku dostává jiná optika. Autorka navíc jako sociální historička neopomíjí ani názory sovětské veřejnosti, která zde není vnímání jako zcela pasivní masa lidí. Sheila Fitzpatricková představuje proud tzv. kritiků totalitarismu a zde ukazuje přesně proč, protože totalitární přístup k dějinám vyviní téměř všechny kromě totalitního vládce. Nový přístup se snaží o barvitější obraz a tento čtivě napsaný mi připadal docela přesvědčivý.

[Barbora Jirincova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jiný a nový pohled na politiku sovětského svazu - pohledem nejbližších Stalinových spolupracovníků se člověku dostává jiná optika. Autorka navíc jako sociální historička neopomíjí ani názory sovětské veřejnosti, která zde není vnímání jako zcela pasivní masa lidí. Sheila Fitzpatricková představuje proud tzv. kritiků totalitarismu a zde ukazuje přesně proč, protože totalitární přístup k dějinám vyviní téměř všechny kromě totalitního vládce. Nový přístup se snaží o barvitější obraz a tento čtivě napsaný mi připadal docela přesvědčivý.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and easy to follow, excellent work on the inner workings of the Soviet system

While I might not call this a “popular history,” Fitzpatrick’s style avoids the tedium to which works on these relatively niche topics are sometimes prone. Like any good historian, she doesn’t take any primary, secondary, or tertiary source at face value, for example she extensively cites some other works on Stalin but often arrives at a different conclusion. I will certainly read this again.

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solidne opracowanie, prezentujące politykę (głównie wewnętrzną) ZSRR za czasów Stalina, Malenkowa i Chruszczowa przez pryzmat otoczenia przywódców - ich najbliższych współpracowników, odpowiedzialnych w swoim zakresie za znaczną część zapadających wówczas decyzji. Klarowny wykład na interesujący temat, choć redakcji umknęło parę drobnych usterek i błędów.

[Noe Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting read, a deep study of the team of Stalin during the crucial years of the USSR, it's very interesting to know the way Stalin worked with his comrades/partners. I recommend this book to those who have a special interest in the USSR.

[Jason S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really wonderful work of history. Persuasively argues that Stalin’s “team” was involved deeply in running the country, even constraining his power at the end and peacefully transitioning after his death. Particularly good on the 1953-1957 pre-Khrushchev period.

[Pilyta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro interesante para los amantes de la historia sobre stalin y sus séquito que lo acompañaron en sus atrocidades hacia el pueblo ruso y fueron además su familia aunque este personaje tenía poco conocimiento del significado de la palabra familia.... un 100 al cubo

[Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisitely researched account of how Stalin governed.

[Varði · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read.

[Yves Panis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livre sur l'entourage de Staline que l'auteur appelle "L'équipe". Où on apprend plein de choses passionnantes sur Molotov, Beria, et les autres.

[Flob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has given me an interesting view on Stalin's methods. He seems more human and , as a result, all the more chilling.

[Mateo Toledo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy entretenido.