Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle

Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes

by Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Nora Seligman Favorov (Translation)

Based on meticulous research in previously unavailable documents in the Soviet archives, this compelling book illuminates the secret inner mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union during the years when Stalin established his notorious dictatorship. Oleg V. Khlevniuk focuses on the top organ in Soviet Russia’s political hierarchy of the 1930s—the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party—and on the political and interpersonal dynamics that weakened its collective leadership and enabled Stalin’s rise.

Khlevniuk’s unparalleled research challenges existing theories of the workings of the Politburo and uncovers many new findings regarding the nature of alliances among Politburo members, Sergei Kirov’s murder, the implementation of the Great Terror, and much more. The author analyzes Stalin’s mechanisms of generating and retaining power and presents a new understanding, unmatched in texture and depth, of the highest tiers of the Communist Party in a crucial era of Soviet history.

 

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

343 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2008

About the author

Oleg Vitalyevich Khlevniuk Ukrainian and Russian historian of Stalinism and the Soviet Union. His position as senior researcher of the State Archive of the Russian Federation has given him unprecedented access to source documents kept strictly secret until the fall of Communism in 1991, and he has done much to study the materials and make them available to other scholars.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pair with Stephen Kotkin and Robert Conquest, from the West, and you've got a solid understanding of what Stalin and the party leadership looked like.

[Carlos Filipe Bernardino · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author helps us understand how Stalin, during the 1930s, ended the oligarchic government regime and transformed it into a personal dictatorship. The book also explains not only the importance of the Great Terror for the dictator, but also the continuous purges, at all levels, carried out in Soviet society.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

anti-revisionist, neo-totalitarian analysis of Stalin's rise from "first among equals" in oligarchic USSR of the late 1920's to dictatorship by the early-mid-1930's. Reasserts that social mobility is not a valid explanation for the Terror (real or not), specifically targeting Getty. It may be more the fault of the translator, but the writing is quite stilted, and reads a bit like someone doing an impression of a native Russian speaker in English. He also says "comrade-in-arms" like 87 times.