The chilling story of Stalin’s crimes against humanity
Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, bloody massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen. Stalin's Genocides is the chilling story of these crimes. The book puts forward the important argument that brutal mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s were indeed acts of genocide and that the Soviet dictator himself was behind them.
Norman Naimark, one of our most respected authorities on the Soviet era, challenges the widely held notion that Stalin's crimes do not constitute genocide, which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race, religion, or inherent national qualities. In this gripping book, Naimark explains how Stalin became a pitiless mass killer. He looks at the most consequential and harrowing episodes of Stalin's systematic destruction of his own populace—the liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks, the Ukrainian famine, the purge of nationalities, and the Great Terror—and examines them in light of other genocides in history. In addition, Naimark compares Stalin's crimes with those of the most notorious genocidal killer of them all, Adolf Hitler.
Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies at Stanford University. His books include Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe and The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Genocide Issue 15 Chapter 2: The Making of a Genocidaire 30 Chapter 3: Dekulakization 51 Chapter 4: The Holodomor 70 Chapter 5: Removing Nations 80 Chapter 6: The Great Terror 99 Chapter 7: The Crimes of Stalin and Hitler 121 Conclusions 131 Notes 139 Index 155
What People are Saying About This
Gross
This book is simply outstanding. Naimark takes the most significant aspect of Stalin's rule—mass terror—and shows how it was applied under Stalin's direct inspiration and, often, his close supervision. It is proof of Naimark's mastery of the subject and superb writing skills that he can provide sharp, gripping sketches of such monumental issues in Soviet history. — Jan T. Gross, author of "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland"
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Stalin's Genocides is a magisterial and admirably lucid analysis of the Stalinist terrors that is both totally accessible and finely nuanced in its scholarship—Naimark's superb work assigns the criminality to Stalin's own bizarre personality as well as the repressive Soviet system. — Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of "Young Stalin" and "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar"
From the Publisher
"Stalin's Genocides is a magisterial and admirably lucid analysis of the Stalinist terrors that is both totally accessible and finely nuanced in its scholarship—Naimark's superb work assigns the criminality to Stalin's own bizarre personality as well as the repressive Soviet system."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Young Stalin and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar"This book is simply outstanding. Naimark takes the most significant aspect of Stalin's rule—mass terror—and shows how it was applied under Stalin's direct inspiration and, often, his close supervision. It is proof of Naimark's mastery of the subject and superb writing skills that he can provide sharp, gripping sketches of such monumental issues in Soviet history."—Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
