Сталин и его подручные

by Donald Rayfield, Дональд Рейфилд

Известный британский историк и литературовед, автор бестселлеров "Грузия. Перекресток империй. История длиной в три тысячи лет" и "Жизнь Антона Чехова", предлагает детальный анализ исторической эпохи и личностей, ответственных за преступления, в которых исчезли миллионы людей, "не чуявших под собой страны". Руководители печально знаменитой Лубянки — Дзержинский, Менжинский, Ягода, Ежов, Берия — послушные орудия в руках великого кукловода — "человека с усами", координатора и вдохновителя невероятных по размаху репрессий против собственного народа.

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

686 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Donald Rayfield is an emeritus professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He translated Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls and Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories and Sketches of the Criminal World for NYRB Classics.

Reviews

[Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought Donald Rayfield’s Stalin and his Hangmen six or seven years while I was studying modern Russian history in sixth form at school. I never read it, though, because it was squeezed out by another book published at about the same time – Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

My present fascination with the writing of Vasily Grossman persuaded me to turn to the long-neglected Raysfield for some additional background information on the nature of the Soviet state and the terror apparatus it spawned. I’m rather glad I did because this is a good book, though not a great one, a reasonably through treatment of the people and the institutions without whom Stalin could not have functioned in the way that he did.

It’s a set of mini-biographies, or perhaps pathologies is a better expression, of Stalin himself and the successive heads of state security, appointed after the Bolshevik coup in late 1917. They are there in all of their fanaticism and depravity.

Imagine, if you will, some kind of reverse Darwinian progression, with successive stages of moral, sometimes physical, degeneration. Imagine also a progress in inhumanity and cruelty that is a perfect echo of the progress and inhumanity of communism at large. Now picture the men; picture Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka, the first in a long line of sinister acronyms, and then those who came after: Viacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrik Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenti Beria. These are the principal players, though the book also features some of those spawned in their shadows, even deeper levels of ugly depravity.

It’s also a biography of the institutions themselves and their evolution, from Cheka, to GPU, to OGPU, to NKVD, to MGB, to the FSB of today. These awful acronyms both display and hide so much. They are the cords in a binding wrapped ever closer around the body of Russia, tighter and tighter, as freedom was squeezed to death. The awfulness was there right from the beginning in the system created by Lenin; Stalin simply made it even worse, with the aid of his various hangmen.

I knew more about some of the men featured in this book than others, quite a lot about Dzerzhinsky, who, if he had survived, would almost certainly have gone the same way as Yagoda and Yezhov, men who supped too close to the devil, and nothing at all about Menzhinsky.

I thought of Yezhov, who presided over the hysteria of 1937 and 1938, which we now know as the Great Terror, as the individual with most blood on his hands, but the weight is heaviest on Menzhinsky, head of the OGPU at the time of forced collectivisation and a state-induced famine that lead to the death of millions. There is genocide here, ethnic-cleansing before the world had ever heard of ethnic cleansing. The urban terror, the Yezhovchina, of 1937 to 1938 was bad, but the rural terror of 1930 to 1933 was even worse.

Rayfield tells his story well, scholarly but with a strong seasoning of passion, though I do have serious reservations over some of his more dubious judgements. In Murdering the Old Guard, section six of the book, he says that Stalin was no more a communist than a Borgia pope was a Catholic. That’s a rather odd contention because the Borgia pope – I assume he is thinking of Alexander VI – was a Catholic, just as Stalin was a communist. The difference is the one was an aberration of a system of belief and the other its most refined expression. More seriously, I think his analysis of Stalin’s relations with Hitler both weak and seriously inaccurate at points, showing that his grasp of the twists in Soviet foreign and ideological policy is not quite as strong as it should be.

The conclusion, though, is superb. As he says, it is a paradox that Russia’s two greatest novelists Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in all their work insisted that only by full confession could the crimes of the past be absolved and life become endurable again – “…yet today’s Russian state refuses to abjure Stalin and his henchmen.” Hardly surprising when that same state is run by a man who is by career and choice, as the author puts it, a successor to Yagoda and Beria, a state where “..the FSB has taken, in alliance with bandits and extortioners, the commanding heights of the country’s government and economic riches, and goes on lying to, and when expedient murdering, it’s citizens.”

How much worse the situation seems to have become since I bought this book, how much Russia moves in an ever downward spiral, crushed under the weight of its unrequited history;

Until the story is told in full, and until the world community insist tat the legacy of Stalin is fully accounted for and expiated, Russia will remain spiritually sick, haunted by the ghosts of Stalin and his hangmen and, worse, by nightmares of their resurrection.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Loses 1/4 star on a second reading)

Leopold von Ranke once said that an historian should write well, but not *too* well -- and Rayfield almost falls into this latter category. Moreover, there is no attempt to hide his absolute contempt for Stalin; he does not refrain from using moral adjectives; and so his book gains readability, but looses a touch of objectivity. Hence, the missing star.

That said, this is an outstanding book: readable, intense, clearly authoritative -- Rayfield is fluent in Russian and Georgian, and appears to have a full grasp of primary sources.

The book is structured as a largely chronological account first of Stalin, and then of the various and successive heads of the OGPU/NKVD/etc. This gives Rayfield a chance to proceed historically, while at the same time presents 'mini-biographies' of ALL the principal actors from Lenin to Khruschiev. There is thus a great deal on Dzierzynski (Rayfield uses unconvential spellings), Menzhinsky, Orjonikidze, Iagoda, Ezhov, and Beria, on the Collectivization and the famines, on the great purges, the show trials, the Great Terror, and so forth -- putting all into clear focus. He also covers all the other figures in some depth, from Lenin and Krupskaia to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Molotov, the murders of men like Babel and Mandalstam, Katyn, and much, much else.

And his portrait of Stalin is, to say the least, both balanced and utterly convincing (and chilling...).

The one real surprise is his account of the radical and rapid thaw that Beria oversaw in the 100 days after Stalin's death. For Rayfield, Beria -- who was undoubtedly blood-thirsty and lecherous -- found a germ of humanity and quickly moved to implement it. He was then murdered by Khruschiev and Molotov and the others because he was moving to liberalize too quickly. I don't know if this interpretation, found at the end of the book, will withstand scrutiny. On the other hand, he does allow that Khruschiev also eventually found a bit of humanity within himself. Putin is then placed right in the grand tradition of other NKVD luminaries (minus the alleged and late-blooming 'humanity' of Beria)

I have tended to find long books on Stalin and his regime a bit dull -- perhaps because they are such drab and unfeeling creatures -- but this one, under 500 pages -- serves as an excellent account, and an excellent introductory account, of the entire period.

4.5 stars and highly recommended.

[Jeffrey Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a well written and well researched book based on the most recently opened Soviet archives, that reveals in great detail not only what a monstrous regime Stalin's was, but also how much its existance played into the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

(A 2022 review corrected in 2024 but not altered in terms of content).

Wonderful book - should be read by anyone who even thinks they understand, or wants to understand, Russia today. At this point in time (2022 and the invasion of Ukraine is still going on) it is all the more timely, not because it has anything directly to do with the circumstances of the present regime's invasion and atrocities, but because what Russia is today is the result of its history and Stalin is the man who has most to answer for.

I won't even bother answering those who imagine the obscenities' Stalin inflicted on those territories he had power over were in anyway justifiable or necessary - though it is extraordinary how long lived those arguments are - no one at the time, or later would accept that Hitler's barbarities were necessary and those who tired to justify them - all those ridiculous English aristocrats and socialites were, and are, rightly excoriated for their stupidity and blindness. But then nobody really expected anything different from the indifferently to down right badly educated dim wits such as Unity Mitford and HRH Edward VIII - nobody respected them or took them seriously then, or now. How much more shameful the dismal parade of 20th century literary and academic lions who curled up at the feet of Stalin and excused his barbarities long before Hitler was even in power. The few like Gide who would not be cowed or bought are all the more to be praised.

This is an important and memorable book - a really fine contribution to understanding the horrors of 20th century Russia and the world we live in today.

[Serafima Karkkila · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are so many positively profound reviews about this book posted here already, and I do not know how much I can add that hasn’t been said already.

I concur that the author lets a dangerous amount of his subjective views seep into the text of the book. His writing style also conveys an adorably obvious admiration of that of Simon Sebag Montefiore. Rayfield tries to imitate him, not quite reaching Montefiore’s level of mastery over the written word.

As someone deeply versed in the events and lives of the titular characters of this book, I did not really learn anything that I did not already know. I would have appreciated getting a deeper look into the ‘why’ instead of the ‘what’.

Also, this is just a personal pet peeve, but I do not for the life of me understand why Rayfield insisted on using such unconventional translations for Russian / Georgian surnames. It really irked me, having read thousands of pages using a very stable ‘agreed upon’ set of English translations.

Still, I do not want to sound overly harsh! I suppose this is a good place to get a rough (albeit rather biased) overall view of the topic (but even then, there is no reason to read this over or after Montefiore’s analogous works).

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rayfield writes a very personal account of Stalin and those close to him who were primarily responsible for the mass killings that occurred during the early Soviet Union: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria. Going through the personal lives of each of them and how it factored into their overall choices to engage in mass murder, it proves a very gripping account. Written not as a serious academic tome but more in the style of popular history, Rayfield still keeps it serious and to a high standard. Though written chronologically it does move back and forth as new characters are introduced, going back to examine their lives, which further breaks up the book and makes it easy to read in short periods. If one is interested in a more intimate look at some of the most heinous figures in history, this is a great source and provides a lot of information.

[David Withers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the title says it all really. Good breakdown of Stalin and the various leaders of the GPU, OGPU, NKVD etc and how the revolutionary and idealistic spirit was first broken and then totally eradicated. Reminds you what people are capable of

[Ciaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting historical read, very slow at times, but leaves you in no doubt about the monster this man was, and the yes-men around him.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

#The Killing Fields of Communism: Read between 2013 and 2025

I picked up Stalin and His Hangmen in 2017, a year when I seemed to be on a steady march through the darkest corridors of 20th-century history.

By then I had read plenty on Stalin, but Rayfield’s title promised something different: not just the tyrant himself, but the shadowy figures who oiled the gears of his killing machine. The book did not disappoint.

Rayfield opens with a deceptively calm, almost clinical introduction — but within pages, you’re plunged into the Cheka’s early days, where Felix Dzerzhinsky set the tone for what would become nearly a century of institutionalised state violence. From Dzerzhinsky’s gaunt, ideological fervour, through Vyacheslav Menzhinsky’s more bureaucratic but equally lethal reign, to the likes of Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria, each man gets his own grotesque portrait. The effect is chilling: you realise that Stalin’s terror wasn’t a solo act but a relay race of murderers, each one perfecting the craft for the next.

What sets Rayfield apart is his access to newly opened archives and private collections, particularly the Nestor Lakoba archive. The revelations here give the book its electric charge. These aren’t just the recycled anecdotes of Cold War polemics — they are intimate glimpses: internal memos dripping with paranoia, interrogation transcripts where you can almost hear the trembling, and personal correspondence that shows the banal domestic lives of men who ordered mass killings by day.

The contradiction is unbearable, and that’s precisely Rayfield’s point: totalitarianism thrives on compartmentalised humanity.

As I read, I found myself drawn not just to Stalin’s psychology — which, by now, feels grimly familiar — but to Rayfield’s nuanced portrayals of the “hangmen”. Dzerzhinsky emerges as the ascetic zealot who believed terror was purifying.

Menzhinsky, ailing and reclusive, ruled from his sickbed but still signed death orders with icy detachment. Yagoda’s petty corruption — a love of orchids and a mistress or two — seems almost trivial until you remember the hundreds of thousands he consigned to the camps.

Yezhov is perhaps the most nightmarish: a small man in stature, but a giant in cruelty, orchestrating the Great Terror with mechanical efficiency before being swallowed by the same system he served. Beria, urbane and calculating, is the most chilling of all — not because he was the most violent (though he was violent enough), but because he understood perfectly how to use terror as a political tool, even in the brief “thaw” after Stalin’s death.

Rayfield’s structure works like a slow tightening of a noose. The chapters blend biography with the larger political machinery, showing how each man didn’t just serve Stalin — he reshaped the state’s capacity for repression.

It’s a grim lineage, and the book’s later chapters make the case that this tradition didn’t die in 1953. Rayfield draws a line — not subtle, but necessary — from Beria’s shadow to the modern Russian security apparatus, including the KGB veterans who now rule under Vladimir Putin.

The style is brisk but never shallow, weaving in mini-biographies of victims alongside the hangmen. We meet writers like Babel and Mandelstam, scientists, lawyers, and ordinary people, all of whom became props in the theatre of show trials and victims in the machinery of state terror.

These interludes are devastating — they keep the book from becoming a parade of monsters without context.

Reading this in 2017, I remember feeling both informed and deeply unsettled. This wasn’t just history; it was a manual for how terror can be bureaucratised, normalised, and passed down like a state secret. The “pyramid of murderers” Rayfield describes felt, in some moments, uncomfortably close to patterns in the present day.

By the time I turned the last page, I had that hollow, stunned feeling — the kind you get after watching a masterfully told but utterly bleak story.

Stalin and His Hangmen isn’t just a biography of evil; it’s a reminder that evil is rarely the work of one man. It’s a system, a chain of hands, each one bloodier than the last.

[Robert Papas · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you reach the midpoint of Donald Rayfield's book, it's easy to get the feeling that reading it will take forever. That isn't because the book is too long, or that it isn't an absorbing read, but because the subject matter details the long career of one of the worst tyrants in human history, so that means there's plenty to cover.

Despite the fact that the book was released in 2004, there are long stretches of it that are either newly relevant or still relevant in the world of 2022. Rayfield explains the history of the long conflict between Russians and Ukrainians, which is obviously topical today, and why Stalin's actions in the 1920s and 1930s are responsible for ongoing conflict to this day. Rayfield also explains, though obviously unintentionally, how some Soviet attitudes after the Great Patriotic War have since been replicated in our modern politics, especially by the American left.

Rayfield spends as much time chronicling the lives of Stalin's henchmen as he does Stalin himself -- which is fitting in a way, because they're all guilty of some of the worst crimes against humanity the world has ever seen. During the chapters on the Second World War, it genuinely seems as though Rayfield writes about a contest between Hitler and Stalin -- not on the battlefield, but simply to see which dictator can kill the most Russians.

It's hard to avoid a feeling of melancholy, or even morbid fascination, as the reader absorbs the rise and fall of one mass murderer after another, the killer's inevitable transfer to a less important post as part of the fall from grace, the arrest, the torture-induced confessions, the show trials, and the executions. One can't help but feel that this is what Germany would have looked like over time had Hitler maintained power, and the end result is a powerful condemnation of totalitarianism no matter the source.

The book does suffer from the occasional oddly-worded sentence, which is jarring when taken in the context of an otherwise well written text. The names also tend to run together after a time, and could use the occasional reminder from the author about a given thug's backstory. However, in the history of Stalin's rule, killers, torturers and goons are par for the course -- so names running together neither surprises nor seems entirely out of place.

For purposes of the historical record alone, this is an important book, but similar to works such as Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" series, it also serves as a warning.

[Pedro Enguita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stalin y los verdugos es un libro de historia que narra desde el nacimiento de Stalin y sus secuaces (finales del siglo XIX) hasta la ejecución de Beria (pocos meses después de la muerte de Stalin).

Cuenta con profusas biografías que incluyen citas, testimonios, filias y fobias. Resulta, por tanto, un libro excepcionalmente detallado a la hora de comprender las personas, sus personalidades y las relaciones que se establecen entre ellas. A veces resulta un tanto excesivo, puesto que desciende tres grados en el escalafón (Stalin, sus esbirros y los esbirros de los esbirros) y la abundancia de nombres abruma, más aún teniendo en cuenta que son 30 años de régimen estalinista, con abundantes purgas (con los consiguientes relevos de personal). Aunque el libro intenta ser neutral, no ahorra calificativos sobre el régimen (pero, claro, resulta imposible mantenerse al margen de un régimen como ese).

La única pega que le encontré al libro es que, al centrarse en las personas, se pierde en demasiadas ocasiones la visión del conjunto de la URSS. Grandes acontecimientos como el Holodomor o la II Guerra Mundial quedan mal explicados, por lo que el lector tiene que venir bien documentado antes de emprender una lectura como esta.

[Ra44 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always wanted to get acquainted with Stalin and his mass murdering operatives? 8-] This is kind of the flip side of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag book.

Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka said: "We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly",and "[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles".
Felix died of a heart attack after giving a two hour harangue against some of Stalin's enemies.

Menzhinsky succeeded Iron Felix, but his health was poor, so Yagoda was the actual person running the Cheka and terrorizing Soviet citizens according to Stalin's whims and paranoid fantasies.

It's a good read and the happy part is that the rats Yagoda, the "poisonous dwarf" Yeshov, the serial rapist Beria, who successively headed the Checka, OGPU etc., wound up the same way as many of their victims: a bullet in the head.

[Natia Morbedadze · Rating 3 out of 5]

საბჭოთა ისტორიით დაინტერესებული მკითხველები სტალინის ბიოგრაფიას დეტალურად ვიცნობთ სხვადასხვა ავტორების შემოქმედებიდან, თუმცა ამ წიგნს ერთი მნიშვნელოვანი რამ განასხვავებს - აქ აქცენტი მხოლოდ სსრკ-ს სისხლიან ბელადზე კი არა, მის ჯალათებზეცაა გაკეთებული და უფრო ახლოს ვიცნობთ ცნობილი საიდუმლო პოლიციის "შემოქმედთ" და სხვებს - იმ ადამიანებს, რომლებმაც სტალინთან ერთად შექმნეს ბოროტების იმპერია.

[Peires · Rating 3 out of 5]

Among several excellent books on Stalin's, Rayfield excels with detail (Georgian as well as Russian-language sources) and anecdote but fails miserably with analysis. One does not need to be persuaded that Stalin was a monster, or that Ezhov was worse than Yagoda, but personality alone cannot fully explain everything that happened.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rayfield's careful research focuses on Stalin and the assorted secret police leaders who served him. While Stalin clearly bears chief responsibility for his murderous regime, he found in the likes of Dzerzhinsky, Yezhov, Yagoda, and Beria monsters in their own rights to assist him.

[O'Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stalin era la cara más destacada del régimen soviético,el que ordenó desapariciones y masacres, pero no actuó solo. A su lado tenía a distintos dirigentes más o menos cercanos que ayudaron y fueron cómplices necesarios en el terror.

[Lector45 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendo libro documento sobre la era Stalin y sus incontables crímenes de lesa humanidad. Sus secuaces y matones protagonizaron una serie de masivos asesinatos y torturas. Pero ellos también tuvieron el fin de sus víctimas.

[Spencer Willardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book focuses on the relationship between the Secret police bosses - from the Cheka to the NKVD - and Stalin.

It is a stark reminder of the murderous impulses that power hungry individuals seem to have. The book is stark, but its lessons, timeless.

[Fernando J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imprescindible ensayo sobre el Terror estalinista y sobre los hombres que lo hicieron posible.

[Deinonix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Круговорот дат, фамилий и сухого языка.
"Сталин и его подручные" - достаточно однобокое исследование. Упор делается на репрессии и ужасы сталинизма. Хорошее, будь то победа в войне или успех коллективизации, упоминается как что-то совершенно неважное. Складывается впечатление, что "герои" книги тут как бы ни при чём, и все достижения случились вопреки, а не благодаря.
Рейфилд пытается выдержать временной вектор, но постоянные перепрыгивания с одного персонажа на другого, с сегодня на завтра, с завтра на вчера, мешают восприятию. В одном абзаце, а то и предложении, могут быть перечислены три-четыре события, разбросанные на десятилетия вперёд.
Большой пласт информации подаётся в формате "а вот потом будет так-то", причём появляется этот пласт внезапно, будто в тексте происходит землетрясение. Бац - и тебе предсказывают, как и где скончается очередной поэт. Когда книга хронологически подходит к нужной дате, то никто не освежает в памяти написанное ранее. Закрепления материала не происходит, то есть незнакомым с матчастью читать становится сложнее. Ставить в тексте своего рода чеховское ружьё никто не собирается, автор спешит обрушить шквал информации там, где она, по сути, пока не нужна.
Жизнь простых советских граждан отображается общими фразами типа "народу было плохо". Конкретика присутствует только в рассказах об интеллигенции и высших политических чинах.
В остальном книга справляется с темой, вынесенной в заголовок. Общее понятие о "Сталине и его подручных" получить реально. Тех, кого однозначно можно назвать душегубами и мерзавцами, автор так и называет, без обиняков. Если персонаж умён и проницателен, автор постарается указать на это, однако, не без ложки дёгтя. Поэтому, повторюсь, книга идёт с упором на негативное освещение событий. За информацией о достижениях СССР времён 1924-1953 годов явно не сюда. Достижения тут под стать перечисляемым отчётам ЧК-ГПУ-прочимНКВД: "убито и сослано столько-то".
Если вам этого и надо - читать. Если нет, то векипедии - за глаза.

[Joel Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent window into Russian history. It also made an indelible memory of what an absurd life. Stalin constantly cycled through underlings, gaining their loyalty, using them as agents, and eventually discarding them when they began to accumulate too much power. As each of these cycles unfolded, it was shocking to watch a man's rise, his fall, and ultimately his destruction. At the end of his own life, Stalin suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed, face-down in his room. His underlings found him that way and left him untouched and untreated until he died. While they wanted him to pass off the scene so they could take power, they also feared being held responsible if he somehow recovered.

The only negative of the book is that it can be hard to track all the names, and the author sometimes fails to give enough help so that you can keep track.

An excellent read—both educational/informative and instructive in life lessons.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done book about a difficult topic. The author's point is that the biggest madmen of the 20th century could not and did not do all their evil alone and the story of their henchmen needs to be told. Rayfield does a commendable job of pointing out how easily we were swayed by the British and American left into thinking of Stalin as a benign, occasionally misguided, idealist and how it was important for us to do so to be able to gird ourselves for the fight against fascism. At times, the book gets weighed down by its own story --the specific horror and arbitrary nature of Stalinist terror is in a class by itself in quality and quantity. But the portraits of Beria, Eshkov and the rest are deep and insightful.
I wish the libraries and bookstores in the US would carry Rayfield's newest book on the history of Georgia. I know it would take shelf space away from the Oprah book club and James Patterson, but it would be a real treat.

[Kim Hathorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't finish it because I simply lost interest in that particular topic. But for those who are interested I found this book easy to read and interesting with a lot of historical detail. And the key words are 'lot of detail'. This is the kind of book that needs to be read--not just skimmed through. Nearly every sentence provided details of varying importance to the central topic, and so required carefull and consistant reading. As mentioned though I found this book very interesting and easy to read, and would highly recommend it.

Based on the amount I have read, however, I rate this four stars easily.

[Mejix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sprawling.Somewhat unfocused. Some sections are not even about Stalin or his hangmen. Too many names and somewhat confusing chronology. The statistics become numbing. It is admittedly a difficult story to tell but it doesn't help that the author is not much of a storyteller. There are some good sections though.

[Vanjr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have had a pre-occupation with evil rulers of the 20th century. My opinions may change but I am pretty convinced Stalin "wins" as greatest evil leader of that time period. Definitely worse than Mao, probably worse even than Hitler. This book tells part of the story.

[Jack Barsky]

A detailed and horrifying history of the murderous regime of Stalin and his team of executioners, primarily the KGB and its predecessors. Truly an eye opener for anybody who has still an iota of sympathy for "Uncle Joe". As a willing albeit unwitting "ex employee", this book brought me to tears.

[Stephen Hancock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoilt by typing errors.

Only into chapter 2 but not a page goes by without at least one typo. Will persevere due to the subject matter and outstanding book reviews, but ...... should have bought the hardback!

[Dmitry Kolezev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прекрасный очерк сталинской эпохи, рассказанный в основном через биографии Сталина и руководителей ВЧК/НКВД/МГБ. Масса интересных фактов, увлекательное повествование и точное изложение деталей, которому вовсе не вредит авторская интонация (антисталинская, разумеется).

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent book on the 20th century's biggest monster, and the men who killed for him.

More uplifting Soviet history.

[Steven Monrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history of brutality.